by C. S. Harris
“Did it look as if it had been ridden hard?”
“Well, she didn’t show signs of having worked up any kind of a sweat, that’s fer sure. So I’d say, no, that horse hadn’t been ridden far at all.”
The witches’ cottages of Sebastian’s childhood imaginings had been dark, decrepit places, with mold-slimed walls and grimy, cobwebbed windows and broken shutters that creaked ominously in the wind. The witches themselves, of course, were all hideous creatures—bent, skeletal crones with wild hair and hooked noses and drooling, toothless grins.
But when he followed the dark, overgrown path that wound through the mingling willows and oaks that grew along the banks of the millstream, he came upon a tidy, recently whitewashed cottage with a newly thatched roof and a profusion of rambling roses in a riot of pink and scarlet. Chickens scratched in the well-swept yard. A snowy-white gander preened himself in the reeds beside the stream, and finches chirped cheerfully from the branches of a nearby willow. On a low stool beside the cottage’s open door, a white-haired woman sat with a butter churn gripped between her knees. When Sebastian rode into the yard, she set aside her churn and rose gracefully to her feet.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” she said, then added with a smile, “My lord.”
Chapter 28
Sebastian swung out of the saddle, his gaze taking in the doe that grazed unconcernedly at the edge of the clearing, the rabbit foraging in the nearby undergrowth. “You knew I was coming, did you?”
Bessie Dunlop gave a soft chuckle. “They told you I’m a witch, didn’t they?”
The woman’s hair might be white, but her face was surprisingly unlined. If she’d served as nurse to both Sir Peter and Lady Prescott before him, Sebastian knew that Bessie Dunlop had to be at least in her seventies. Yet her cheeks still bloomed with good health and vigor. Small and plump, with a fan of laugh lines radiating out from merry black eyes, she looked far more like a jovial baker’s wife than a witch.
She nodded to a little girl whose dark head peeked around the edge of the doorway. “Missy, take his lordship’s mare and put her in the lean-to so she’ll be out of this wind.”
Sebastian handed the child his reins. “Thank you.”
“My granddaughter,” said Bessie Dunlop, studying Sebastian through suddenly narrowed eyes. And it occurred to him that while she might look like a jolly baker’s wife, appearances could be deceiving.
“Do you know who I am?” he said.
She gave a soft cackle that sounded decidedly unjovial. “Oh, I know who you are, Lord Devlin.” She dropped her voice and leaned forward to whisper, “The question is, do you know? And, more important, do you want to know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She straightened. “When you’re ready to understand, you will.”
He cast a more searching gaze about the clearing. “I assume Jeb Cooper told you to expect me?” It occurred to him that a child like Missy, running along a more direct path, could conceivably have reached the cottage ahead of a horseman following the winding millstream.
“In a manner of speaking.” She turned to pick up a bulky meal sack resting on a shelf built against the cottage wall.
“He says you were at Prescott Grange thirty years ago, the night Sir Nigel disappeared.”
“That’s right.” Opening the meal sack, she thrust her hand inside and came up with a fistful of grain she tossed to the chickens in the yard. The wind caught the seed, scattering it unexpectedly far.
Clucking and jostling for position, a dozen chickens descended upon them, feathers ruffled by the brisk wind. Sebastian felt his initial spirit of goodwill toward this maddeningly smiling woman begin to wane. “He says Sir Nigel and Lady Prescott quarreled that night, and that you would know the subject of their quarrel.”
She shrugged one shawl-draped shoulder. “I know what I heard. It’s no different from what the others in the house that night heard.”
Sebastian waited patiently. It was a moment before she continued. “Afterward, there was all sorts of wild talk, of course. Sir Nigel disappearing like that. Especially when it became known that her ladyship was with child.”
Sebastian studied the woman’s half-averted profile. “When was Sir Peter born?”
“Late February. He came early. He was expected in April.”
Late February would have been seven months after Sir Nigel disappeared, Sebastian thought. And just over seven months after the Baronet had returned from America. No wonder Lady Prescott had been vague about the dates of her husband’s return.
A scratching sound drew Sebastian’s attention to a ratty brown hen pecking and clawing at the shiny surface of his Hessians. He shifted his feet, but the hen persisted. Careful, he thought, or you’ll end up in a stew pot, my fine feathered friend.
“I keep the hens for their eggs,” she said, as if he had spoken the thought aloud. “Not for the pot.”
She laughed when he looked up at her, startled. “I eat no flesh of my fellow beings. It’s why the creatures of the forest know they need have no fear in approaching me.”
Sebastian glanced over to where he’d seen the doe, but the deer was gone. He said, “You still haven’t told me the reason Sir Nigel quarreled with Lady Prescott that night.”
“Nor will I.” Tossing the last of the grain, she turned back toward the cottage. The loyal family retainer, loyal to the end.
Sebastian followed her. “Three men are dead.”
“And you think it’s because of that quarrel?”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time, she looked vaguely troubled. Seating herself on her stool again, she reached for the churn. “I haven’t seen Lady Rosamond in some time,” she said in an apparent non sequitur. “It was Sir Peter gave me this cottage.”
“Lady Rosamond being Lady Prescott?”
The old nurse worked her churn. “She’ll always be Lady Rosamond to me, just like she was when she was a little girl.” She paused. “Now, Sir Peter, he comes to visit me regularly. Why, he was here just last week.”
Sebastian watched her work her butter. He said, “You haven’t actually told me anything. You know that, don’t you?”
She stopped churning long enough to look up at him. “Oh, but I have.” Lifting her head, she called to her granddaughter, “Missy, fetch his lordship’s horse. He’ll be wanting to make it to Prescott Grange before the rain starts.”
The first raindrops began to fall just as Sebastian clattered into the centuries-old courtyard. It hadn’t been his intention to call again at Prescott Grange. But too many questions about Sir Nigel’s last, fatal night remained unanswered.
He found Lady Prescott even paler and more wan than he remembered her, her soft blue eyes huge with what looked very much like fear. She received him in the Grange’s ancient hall, a graceful medieval chamber with tapestry-draped stone walls and a massive fireplace and a decorated wooden ceiling supported by stone corbels carved into fanciful shapes.
“We’ve heard the dreadful news about Reverend Earnshaw,” she said, gripping his hand tightly for a moment before turning away to order tea. “I do hope you’re here to tell us there’s been some progress in identifying this killer?”
“I’m afraid not.” Adjusting the tails of his riding coat, Sebastian settled on a hard, stiff-backed settee covered in a faded tapestry worked in the style of the previous century. “But I had an interesting encounter this morning with your old nurse.”
The widow sank into a low chair beside a work basket and a stand supporting an embroidery frame. “Bessie Dunlop?” she asked, drawing the frame to her.
“I understand she has something of a reputation as a witch.”
Lady Prescott took up her needle. “Old women living alone in the wood often give rise to such speculation.”
“She does seem uncannily prescient.”
Lady Prescott bent her head to focus her attention on her stitches. “Bessie is unusually observant, and a good student
of human nature. That is enough to make her a witch in the eyes of the villagers.”
“She’s fortunate not to have lived in a less enlightened century.”
“As are we all.”
Sebastian studied the widow’s hollow cheeks and downswept lashes. “She is very loyal to you.”
Lady Prescott looked up, her eyes twinkling with unexpected amusement. “In other words, she wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know.”
Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “No, she wouldn’t.”
The widow tipped her head to one side. “And precisely what is it you wished her to tell you?”
Sebastian met her gaze squarely. “I understand you and Sir Nigel quarreled the night he disappeared.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” She bent over her embroidery again, her equanimity unruffled. “My husband had a violent temper. He quarreled with everyone, about anything and everything. It would have been unusual had we not disagreed that night.”
Sebastian watched the woman’s half-averted, faintly flushed face. He could hardly say to her, Did your husband come home from America to discover you pregnant with another man’s child? Was that the topic of that fatal night’s confrontation? Even if it were true, she would never admit it.
He said, “I understand you rode after him that night.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Jeb Cooper told you that, did he?”
“Is it true?”
“I had Jeb saddle my mare, yes. Nigel was—” she paused as if choosing her words with care “—a very difficult man. I fell into the habit of going for a ride when I was . . . upset.”
“Even at night?”
She touched her left eyelid with her fingertips. Then, as if becoming aware of what she was doing, she curled her hand into a fist and rested it on her lap. “At such times, one has little care for one’s own safety.”
It was a remark that told Sebastian volumes about her marriage. He said, “So you didn’t follow Sir Nigel to London?”
“The last thing I wanted at that moment was to see him again.”
“Do you recall the nature of your disagreement?”
She shook her head. “Sir Nigel had a vicious temper. He could fly into a rage over the simplest of things, from a badly swept chimney to a dinner of fish or veal when he was fancying lamb. One never knew what would set him off.”
Sebastian said, “I’m told Sir Nigel returned from America with a set of papers. Letters written to the Confederation Congress by someone either at Whitehall or in close association with the King. Do you know anything about that?”
She jabbed her needle into her embroidery so violently that she pricked her finger. “Do you mean to say he had evidence of some treason?”
“So it would seem, yes.”
She brought her pricked finger to her lips and sucked on it. It was a childlike gesture, and had the effect of suddenly making her look both younger and more vulnerable. She said, “I know Sir Nigel came home from America preoccupied and surly—unusually so, even for him. But if he had evidence of high treason within the government, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m afraid he never discussed his affairs with me. He never even explained completely the purpose of his mission to America.”
“They left for America—when? Late January? Early February?”
Her forehead puckered with thought. “Oh, no, it was sometime in December. I don’t remember the exact date, but I know it was before Christmas.”
Sebastian stared at her. He knew a peculiar tingling sensation, as if every nerve in his body were suddenly, painfully heightened. He could hear the laughter of a housemaid in a distant room, smell the bitter tinge of stale ashes on the hearth. He felt his breath fill his lungs, and had to force himself to exhale.
He was aware of her looking at him strangely. It was an effort for him to speak, to keep his voice even, as if every facet of his life didn’t depend on her answer.
He said, “You’re certain?”
“Why, yes. I’m afraid I don’t recall the exact date, but I do know it was before Christmas. We still follow the old tradition of St. Thomas’s Day here at the Grange, when needy women are allowed to go begging from door to door for Christmas ‘goodenings.’ I remember it distinctly because that was the first year I distributed our charity to the women personally.”
“Did the entire mission sail together?”
The question seemed to puzzle her. “Of course. Why wouldn’t they?”
He pushed to his feet. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
She set aside her embroidery and stood with him. “But surely you’ll stay for tea?”
“What? Oh. No, thank you.”
Somehow, he managed to murmur the requisite polite phrases, to take possession of his hat and riding quip, and call for his horse.
He had only the vaguest memories of mounting the Arab at the worn old block in the corner of the court and setting her on the long road back to London. The wind blew in short, sharp bursts that stung his cheeks with a needlelike spray of rain. He blinked, wiped the water from his eyes, and rode on.
In three months’ time, on the nineteenth of October, Sebastian would celebrate his thirtieth birthday. But if what Lady Prescott had told him were true . . . If the Earl of Hendon had indeed left England for the American Colonies in December of 1781, then Hendon could not possibly be Sebastian’s father.
And his name should not, in truth, be Sebastian St. Cyr.
Chapter 29
A thousand recollections rode with Sebastian through the howling wind and driving rain. Raw memories of a disap proving father whose harshest words had always been reserved for his youngest child, the son so unlike all the others, the son who grew tall and lean when his brothers were built solid and big boned, and whose eyes were a strange amber in place of the vivid St. Cyr blue. The son with the preternatural hearing and vision, the quick reflexes and uncanny ability to see in the dark. The son who by some cruel twist of fate had lived to become Hendon’s heir when both his brothers died.
He remembered snatches of hushed conversations the child he’d once been was never meant to overhear. Voices raised in anger and in pleading. Words that had made no sense, until now.
The white blur of a tollgate loomed out of the mist. Sebastian reined in hard, fists clenching with impatience, the mare’s hooves churning the mud while he waited for the grumbling attendant to lumber from his cottage, head bent and shoulders hunched against the downpour. Reaching down to hand the toll to the attendant, Sebastian realized he was shaking. Shaking with pain and denial.
Yet as the gate swung open and he set his spurs to the Arab’s flanks, Sebastian was aware of a small spark of hope fed by a burning rage. Because if Alistair St. Cyr were not, in truth, Sebastian’s father, then the horror of incest that had driven him from Kat Boleyn was all a mistake. No, not a mistake: a lie.
One more lie in a long string of deceptions stretching back nearly thirty years.
Still booted and spurred from the ride back to town, Sebastian went straight to the great St. Cyr pile on Grosvenor Square. But he found Hendon out and the painfully proper butler unable to say where the Earl had gone or when he would be back. Drawing the same blank at Hendon’s clubs, Sebastian was on Cockspur Street, striding toward Whitehall, when he heard a man calling his name.
“Lord Devlin.”
Sebastian kept walking.
“I say, Lord Devlin!”
Turning, Sebastian was surprised to find Bishop Prescott’s chaplain weaving his way through the traffic, the hem of his cassock lifted clear of the droppings scattered across the wet pavement by a passing mule team.
“I’d formed the intention of seeking you out later this afternoon,” said the Chaplain, leaping nimbly onto the footpath, “so this meeting is quite fortuitous.”
“You wished to see me?” said Sebastian, holding himself still with effort.
The Chaplain had been smiling faintly. But whatever he saw in Sebastian’s face as he walked up to him caused the smile to
slip, his forehead puckering. “Are you all right, my lord?”
Sebastian found he had to draw in a breath, then another, before he could speak. “Yes, of course. Did you have something for me?”
The Chaplain held out a folded square of paper. “You may have noticed there was a gap in the Bishop’s itinerary on Monday afternoon.”
“Yes. I’d assumed he had official duties scheduled at that time.”
The Chaplain shook his head. “In fact Bishop Prescott paid a call upon a family in Chelsea. I was originally hesitant to pass the information on to you, but I’ve discussed the situation with the Archbishop, who assures me we can rely upon your discretion. It may not be relevant, of course, but I’ve written down the information for you.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian, barely glancing at the scrawled name and address before tucking the paper into his waistcoat pocket.
The Chaplain cleared his throat. “Word reached London House last night about Reverend Earnshaw. A troublesome development. Deeply troublesome.”
Sebastian studied the cleric’s pale, pinched face and noticed for the first time the fear that widened the man’s eyes and flattened his lips. So it was fear that had driven this normally persnickety, disapproving man to suddenly become more cooperative.
A new thought occurred to Sebastian. He said, “How much contact was there between Bishop Prescott and Malcolm Earnshaw? Before Tuesday night, I mean.”
The Chaplain looked blank. “None that I am aware of.”
“Yet the living is in the Prescotts’ gift, is it not?”
“In Sir Peter’s, yes.”
“Was Earnshaw related in some way to the Bishop?”
“A distant cousin of some sort, I believe. Why do you ask?”
“He recognized Sir Nigel’s ring, which means he must have known the man.”
“I can make inquiries into the exact relationship, if you’d like.”
